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The Blue Tongue Filmmakers

The New York Times has a brief profile of the Blue Tongue film collective, a loosely-knit group of Australian filmmakers that are having some success after more than a decade of hard work:

Blue-Tongue Films is unusual in that it has a name — Mr. Edgerton said he got around to registering the trademark a while ago — but is not really a company, with shared profits, nor a true cinematic movement, like Dogme 95 in Denmark.

Rather it is an agglomeration of filmmakers who helped one another into the business and have simply stuck together in jobs that vary from film to film. That includes the stunt work.

Tony Lynch, who worked on Nash Edgerton’s first short, was the stunt coordinator of, and a featured actor in, “The Square.” And Nash Edgerton is credited as stunt coordinator and a stunt double on “Hesher,” a drama that was picked up at Sundance for distribution by Newmarket Films. That film was directed by Spencer Susser, also a Blue-Tongue associate, and includes Natalie Portman, Rainn Wilson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt among its stars.

“I think the longer we have been around, we have all understood the value of moving in packs: the strength of support, the pooling of ideas and equipment and the kudos of associating with each other,” Joel Edgerton wrote in an e-mail message on Tuesday.

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Over the fries on Monday, Mr. Edgerton and Mr. Doolan said they had been reading scripts and attending Hollywood meetings set up by their respective agents.

So far neither had lined up a studio project.

But, they said, more than a few interns and young executives have asked how the Blue-Tongue gang had managed to build filmmaking careers out of little more than shared grit.

“We run into people carrying $120,000 debt from film school,” Mr. Doolan said. “And all they want to know is how we did it.”

About J. Ott

John Ott is a writer, filmmaker and futurist. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.